Diagnostic methods in pathology carry out the detection, identification, quantization, and characterization of cells, structures, and other items of interest. In the past, either a lab technician or a pathologist has typically performed examination of biological tissues manually. In the manual method, a slide prepared with a biological sample is viewed at a low magnification under a microscope to visually locate candidate cells of interest. Those areas of the slide where cells of interest are located are then viewed at a higher magnification to confirm those objects as cells of interest, such as tumor or cancer cells. Such a process is not only cumbersome, but time consuming.
This manual process performed by pathologists has improved with the use of digital images, i.e. photographed or scanned images of slides containing stained biological samples that have been digitized. High-resolution digital images of a biological sample are typically obtained using a microscope and specialized imaging hardware. However, the use of these digital images can lead to inefficiencies in reviewing the samples. For example, a whole-slide image (WSI) of a typical breast core biopsy is usually very large, and has ‘n’ number of tissues on the same slide in a random orientation. When a pathologist reviews this case, they spend considerable amounts of time first in the manual rotation of the slide to a preferred orientation, followed by the challenge of using the mouse to pan the image at the highest magnification from one tissue to the next. Not only is this process of viewing the images inefficient due to the inability to view images according to a preferred view, or modify the appearance and/or behavior of the view, but it also limits the number of cases that can be read in one day. Accordingly, there is a need for a more efficient system and method that provides a customizable user interface to a pathologist for interacting with digital pathology images.